Back from Obesity: My 252-pound Weight-loss Journey

BACK FROM OBESITY

My 252-pound Weight-loss Journey

by Jan Bono

Copyright 2014 Jan Bono

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Sandridge Publications

P.O. Box 278

Long Beach, WA 98631-0278

http://www.JanBonoBooks.com

DEDICATED

to all who suffer from compulsive eating disorders,

with the hope that my story will both

inspire and encourage you,

and a gentle reminder that you are not alone.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Gratefully, and with much love, I’d like to thank all the various Eskimos, cheerleaders, partners in recovery,

support group friends, spiritual gurus, and glorious guides of all types who have tirelessly aided and assisted me in my continued program of weight-loss recovery.

Here are just a few, in the order of their appearance:

Jill, Estelle, Celia, New York David, Maggie, Miki, Steve,

my Law of Attraction guru, Michael Losier,

whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting twice,

and Dr. Mehmet Oz, whom I expect to meet someday soon!

INTRODUCTION

In 1998, I weighed 396 pounds.

That is not a typo. In 1998, I stood 5’6" tall and weighed Three Hundred Ninety-Six pounds. I’d tipped the scale, when I could find one that went that high, at over 370 for nearly a decade. A 60-inch measuring tape was not long enough to record my bust, waist, or hip measurements. I’d lost all hope of ever being a healthy weight or size again, and frequently wondered why I didn’t just kill myself and get my whole miserable life over with.

But by some miracle I still can’t explain, and quite a few supportive people who magically appeared in my life just when I needed them most, I found my bootstraps, and started the arduous process of reclaiming a body I wasn’t ashamed of, along with my missing self-esteem.

Four years later, in 2002, I weighed a comfortable 168, without having used diet pills, any type of bypass surgery, and no extreme dieting or exercise to get there.

I maintained that weight for three years, and then the unthinkable happened: I relapsed. The reasons were many—relationships, retirement, resting on my laurels—but a compulsive overeater doesn’t need a reason to overeat. The bottom line is that for those of us who have struggled with our weight our entire lives, a reason is just another word for excuse.

During the next eight years, from 2005 to 2013, I regained a full 100 pounds. My whole life, not to mention the manuscript I’d written (but never published) about my weight-loss journey during the time I’d been at goal weight, made me feel like one big, fat, fraud.

On January 1st, 2013, I weighed 255 pounds. My orthopedic surgeon told me I was too great a risk for him to consider knee replacement, and the physical pain was often unbearable. The emotional pain, of having recently achieved, and then lost, my healthy weight was even worse.

God willing, I would turn 60 in June, 2014, and I desperately wanted to be able to face that milestone with a body that was as good as it could possibly be. Here we go again, I told myself, and began doing what had worked in the past—and what I knew would work again—if I just kept doing it.

I re-enrolled the support of a few friends, ingested the weight-loss wisdom of Dr. Oz on television while I rode my recumbent bike, and kept track of everything I ate in a daily food journal.

As I write this, I am happily hovering inside my self-proclaimed acceptable target range. The magic (which really isn’t magic at all once you decide to do what is necessary) still worked, and my story, from my all-time high of 396, down to 168, back up to 255, then down to my present acceptable target weight range of 143-147, still screamed to be told.

So here it is. And it’s my fervent hope that those who read this story—of twice running the gamut of utter hopelessness to joyful celebration—will be inspired and motivated to take their own lives in hand and become their healthiest size possible.

If I can do it, you can too.

Jan Bono

August, 2014

BACK FROM OBESITY

My 252-pound Weight-Loss Journey

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I: HOW I GOT SO FAT

The 60s: Kid stuff

The 70s: Late teens and early 20s

The 80s: The M years

The 90s: A decade of life above 350 pounds

CHAPTER II: THE TURNING POINT

Three hundred ninety-six pounds of reality

Counselor from Hell

In lieu of a straitjacket: A 5-point plan

Four of five’s not all that bad

Support groups are for losers and wimps

Backhanded inspiration

A commitmentphobe makes a major commitment

Meeting #11

Something to hold on to

My New York cheerleader

Eskimos

A food plan for life

Garnering more support

Dream it; believe it

CHAPTER III: 50 POUNDS DOWN

Willpower vs. won’t power

Broasted chicken and the banishing bra

Maggie and Miki and Me

Giving thanks for broccoli and other green things

Singing the car buying blues

Finding the willingness to be me

‘Tis the season to gobble down the goodies

Happy New Year 2000

The telltale rocks

In glorious black and white

CHAPTER IV: 100 POUNDS DOWN

Crosses to bear

What does under 300 feel like?

Flying Solo: The view from the back of the plane

Sin City

Facing down the Department of Drivers’ Licensing

No greater gift

What price, commercial recovery centers?

Do-it-yourself retreat

Maggie and Miki revisited

Heigh-ho Silver, away!

A metaphorical fish tale

Going for a test drive

CHAPTER V: 150 POUNDS DOWN

Fatteningly ever after

Where others had just begun

Fashion sense

Aborted Bridge Walk

Happy first anniversary

Dear John

Consolation prize

Catering by Costco

All I want for Christmas

Jim who?

Dining out

February madness

Every excuse for a binge

Some pain, but no weight gain

CHAPTER VI: 200 POUNDS DOWN: "Oh my God!

The first digit is a one!"

Scaling down

Shape-shifting

The great bra-buying ordeal

Birthday burn center blues

The dating game

Sound the retreat!

Tummy tuck information overload

That’s what friends are for

Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude

Incremental friends

Willing to go to any lengths

Las Vegas land mines

CHAPTER VII: FIRST DOWN AND GOAL TO GO

Super-sized garage sale

The last 10 to 30 pounds are the hardest

Maggie and Miki yet again

9/11—Sugar won’t fix it

T minus 7 and counting

A long and arduous journey

10/10 of 01

Two arms! Two arms!

Licking the bottom of the brownie bowl

Kicking and screaming all the way to goal

Cosmetic surgery

No secrets in a small town

Living at Goal Weight

CHAPTER VIII: RELAPSE?! Are You Freakin’

Kidding Me?

The Elephant Man and me

One big, fat, fraud

Once more, with enthusiasm

The Law of Attraction

Pedaling my ass off

In the land of Oz

My all-time favorite fruit

Staying the course—against all odds

But the goal line had moved!

One day at a time

EPILOGUE: So What’s the Plan?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER I: HOW I GOT SO FAT

The 60s: Kid Stuff

A chubby baby is a healthy baby. That was the conventional wisdom in the 1950s, and I was born in 1954, right smack-dab in the middle of the Boomers. By the time I entered kindergarten, I might have been a little hefty for my age, but nobody thought it was anything serious.

There were four children in the family; I was, and still am, the eldest. When the third child was born, we moved from the Lake City area of north Seattle to a split level home in Lynnwood, a few miles north. For several years, Dad commuted 20 miles each way to his job in downtown Seattle while we settled into a richer existence in the suburbs—The land of opportunity.

The opportunity I most recall was the almost limitless availability of food. Everything revolved around it.

Throughout elementary school, when I got high marks on a test or a good report card, we celebrated with food. When I got blue ribbons for science fair projects or running races at field days, we splurged by going out to dinner, and it was often prime rib all around. When I fell down and got a boo-boo, a cookie was right there to comfort me.

Comfort cookies. That’s what they should have called them. Even now, saying their full name brings the mouth-watering smell rushing back: Nestle’s Toll House Cookies. Packed full of sugar, flour, butter, shortening, chocolate chips and walnuts, Mom made sure there were always plastic Wonder Bread sacks in the freezer chock-full of homemade cookies to add to our school lunches.

Naturally, I learned to comfort myself by helping myself. All my inferiority feelings of not being good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, tall enough, thin enough, ad infinitum, played havoc with my pre-pubescent self-worth, but a cookie, or two, or three, or a dozen or more, could make it all better. At least temporarily—like until the sugar buzz wore off.

I didn’t realize until much later that the cookies stolen from the freezer marked the beginning of my penchant for sneak eating. If no one saw when and what I ate, then no one could tell me I was eating too often and too much.

Soon Mom discovered the nearby Hostess day-old bakery, and the freezer suddenly contained not only cookies, but chocolate cream-filled cupcakes, Twinkies, Ho-Hos and Ding-Dongs. It was a virtual paradise for a compulsive eater. Nobody kept an inventory of these allegedly school lunch treats, so nobody ever missed how many I stole.

I ate the cupcakes frozen, holding them upside-down, gnawing on the bottom cake layer first, then the cream center, and finishing up by licking the rapidly-thawing fudge frosting off my fingertips.

At mealtimes, we were reminded of the good fortune of being born in America and told we had to sit there at the kitchen table until we ate everything on our plates. We will not waste food—not while there are starving children in Africa.

Both my parents had been raised in small town poverty. My father’s father was a Mississippi River fisherman; Mother’s father was a southwest Washington dairy farmer.

At Dad’s childhood dinner table, there might not be enough baking powder biscuits to satisfy everyone who showed up to eat, so he and his brothers often hid a quantity of them between their knees under the table as the basket was first passed.

Mom frequently told us the creative ways Grandma prepared their meals based on either spuds and applesauce or applesauce and spuds. Potatoes and apples were plentiful on the farm, but they sacrificed a chicken only on the occasion when company came for Sunday dinner. One chicken—just eight pieces if fried—so often Grandma made chicken and dumplings or chicken pot pie, always with plenty of potatoes.

I suppose with this in their respective backgrounds, it was always a matter of waste not, want not. But even then, I failed to see how anyone eating more than they wanted in America could possibly help the starving children in Africa, and once I remember suggesting we send them our leftovers.

Not surprisingly, my parents didn’t find my comment the least bit amusing, and I still had to sit at the table until my plate was empty.

J.P. Patches was the local television clown. I watched him before school almost every morning. He had an amazing ICU2 TV and could tune in to everyone viewing his show. He often wished us a Happy Birthday or told us to clean up our rooms or mentioned something unique happening in our lives. And he frequently read from his list of Clean Plate Clubbers.

I wanted to be a Patches’ Pal. I wanted to hear my name read by J.P. on TV, and everyday I kept my plate licked clean just in case he might tune in to our house.

By the time I was 10 or 11, I had figured out the connection between my uncle working the audio on the J.P. Patches Show and the frequency of our names being mentioned. It was about the same time I also figured out how to supply myself with non-stop candy bars.

Hot lunch at school was 32 cents. Every night Dad emptied his pocket change into a Mason money jar in the kitchen cupboard. When we bought hot lunch, Mom handed out a quarter, a nickel and two pennies to each of us. No one ever knew exactly how much change was in the jar on any given day—a fact I duly noted.

Candy bars were a nickel apiece at the grocery store, or six for 25 cents and a penny tax. The closest market was two blocks up and seven blocks over, an easy ride for a kid on a bicycle. And it was also easy to slip an occasional quarter and a penny out of the money jar without fear of it being missed. Sometimes I brazenly stole two quarters and two pennies.

I never shared any of my candy bars. Not when I had six, and not when I had twelve. I never took long to pick them out, and I never took long to eat them. They were always completely consumed long before I got back home. Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Snickers, Look, Big Hunk, and of course, M&M Peanuts. Sometimes I got one of each, and sometimes I opted for several bags of M&M Peanuts supplemented with Milky Ways.

On Saturdays we kids attended the matinee at the local movie theater. Because the candy prices inside were so expensive, we stopped at the store on the way and filled our pockets with every conceivable type of theater treat. Mike and Ike’s, Good ‘n’ Plentys, Jujubes, Milk Duds, and chocolate covered raisins.

I don’t remember many of the movies I saw, but I can still recall the feeling of happiness that spread through me when I had my pockets loaded with candy and was headed to the movies. Sometimes I ate 6, 12, or even 18 candy bars during the double feature. I discretely unwrapped them and stuffed the wrappers down into the seat cushions so my siblings wouldn’t tattle about how many I’d had.

The weekends we didn’t go to the movies, we went to see Grandpa. It was a full day and half-the-night round trip. Mom prepared for it by cooking all afternoon the previous day. Fried chicken, potato salad and applesauce cake were the staples. Throw in a few jumbo-sized bags of chips, a few cans of Hi-C orange drink and several bags of marshmallows and/or cookies, and we were all set.

I loved helping Mom make the potato salad. Dicing up potatoes and eggs and green onion and radish and mixing it all in with globs and globs of full-fat mayonnaise.

Taste this, she’d say, feeding me a big spoonful. What’s it need? And I always knew just what it needed. A little more mustard, a touch more salt, another shake or two of pepper. Then I’d have to taste it again. And again. If no one had been there to stop me, I would have eaten the entire enormous mixing bowl of potato salad and still been hungry for more. Craving the tangy taste of the salad dressing she used, I could never get enough.

On the return from Grandpa’s, we four kids sprawled out in sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon. Mom and Dad often stopped for ice cream sundaes on the way home. If I pretended to be asleep, like the other kids actually were, I knew they would stop at the hamburger drive-in. Then I would suddenly be awake and get to finish Mom’s butterscotch sundae. Sometimes they even got me one of my own.

Ice cream played a significant role in my formative years. Still does. But back then, there were always several half gallons of different flavors in the refrigerator freezer. We never ate a regular serving in a petite dessert dish. When we had ice cream, we used the soup bowls and piled it on, along with plenty of sugary toppings.

Hershey’s chocolate syrup could turn any flavor into a fudge-blasting treat, but as a kid I still preferred it topping rocky road or marshmallow ripple. As a pre-teen I discovered the combined qualities of chocolate syrup over peppermint candy and/or chocolate chip mint ice creams, and I often put them all together in one bowl.

Popsicle Pete drove his ice cream truck down our street several times a week. The bell alerting us to his presence made my mouth start to salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs.

For a dime, I could get a Fudgsicle or Sidewalk Sundae or a Nutty Buddy. Sometimes my mother reached in the money jar and gave us all dimes, and one for her, too. She often requested a Creamsicle, and we had to hurry back before hers melted instead of sitting right down on the curb and enjoying our treats.

But occasionally when we heard the ice cream truck coming Mom said No, and that meant I’d have to find a way to get my fix without her approval. A dime was easy enough to come by, so all I had to do was scale the wooden six-foot high back fence and wait for the truck to go down the next street. But if I were going to go to all that trouble, then I wouldn’t get just one cold confection. For a quarter I could get two, and change back, or for two quarters, five ice cream bars could be mine—all mine!

By the time I was 11, I got most of my clothes in the Chubby girls section at Sears. I wasn’t too worried about it, since I was active and full of energy. I heard the grown-ups talking about baby fat and thought that’s all the extra pounds amounted to. I figured when I became a teen, the weight would just drop away, so it was okay until then to eat as much as I wanted.

Being a responsible student, I always had my homework finished, so my sixth grade teacher recommended me to be one of the lunchroom helpers. Not only did this mean I got free hot lunch every day, but I also got to help finish up the leftovers, which often included the tea rolls we called dough goddies. Naturally, I pocketed the 32¢ Mom had laid out on the counter to pay for my hot lunch.

When the family ate breakfast out, it was often when we were on the road for a weekend jaunt. Most often we ate at truck stop restaurants with truck stop portions. I always ordered what my folks ordered: Two eggs over easy, hash browns, sausage or bacon, and toast. The other kids, being younger, might settle for one or two pancakes, but not me.

When we got hamburgers and fries, my sister, nicknamed Skinny-Minnie, got a milkshake with her meal to fatten her up while the rest of us got sodas.

It isn’t fair! I’d protest. You like her better than you like me! Frequently I’d either end up with my own shake to keep me quiet, or be allowed to finish hers if she didn’t drink it all, which she rarely did.

Whole new opportunities for compulsive overeating opened up to me when I entered junior high. For starters, instead of being just a block from home, the school was a little over a mile away. I usually rode the bus, but if I left early enough, I could walk to school. Walking to school meant I had to go right by the Albertson’s grocery store, and the aromas from their bakery permeated the surrounding air for blocks.

There were two things I loved about that bakery. The first was Texas Donuts. Texas Donuts were a lot like regular glazed donuts, only they were the size of dinner plates. They were always warm, slightly gooey, and so fresh the dough softly compressed in my mouth with each bite. Best of all, two of them only cost a quarter!

The second best thing about this bakery was something called Indian Bread. It was a big rounded loaf, like half a basketball. If you asked, they sliced it right there for you, while you watched, salivary glands already in high gear from the smell of fresh baked bread. On days when I walked to school with a few of my friends, we often bought a whole loaf, along with a stick of real butter, and sat right down on the curb in front of the store to enjoy it together. There were never any leftovers.

During 8th grade, McDonald’s opened up a new restaurant right next to the school. Now I had a reason to dawdle after school and accidentally miss the bus so I’d have to walk home. An unlimited source of hamburgers, French fries and milkshakes was impossible to pass up. A burger back then was only 15¢, and I always had money for more than one.

Although a little heavier than most of my friends, it didn’t stop me from joining in with all the extra-curricular junior high activities. With the extra energy burned by playing sports, I somehow managed to keep my weight pretty constant. And participating in after school events meant there was usually enough time to run over to McDonald’s for a quick snack before boarding the activity bus home.

I was still in junior high when I began babysitting for the neighbors. As soon as their kids fell asleep, I ransacked the refrigerator, the freezer, and all the kitchen cupboards, looking for something good to eat while I did my homework. A few of the people I sat for left me a snack, but I never stopped there. Never satisfied with a normal portion, I constantly foraged for more.

During the summer I earned money by picking strawberries. Six days a week I boarded the berry bus, with a very sizeable lunch from home, and made the trek with other kids my age to the fields of the lower Skagit Valley. By the time we arrived, I had already eaten one of my sandwiches and some chips or cookies and usually considered eating my second sandwich before getting out there to work in the fields.

We kids weren’t the only ones out there picking berries. Migrant workers, who lived in the shacks nearby, were already hard at it before we arrived each day, and worked hours more after we loaded the bus to leave. For the convenience of those workers, there was a small store set up where they could charge a few necessities against their coming paychecks.

Of course, the store also took cash. And they had, among the necessities, a pretty good supply of candy. Soon I was gobbling up my entire lunch on the way to the fields and buying up to a dozen candy bars as soon as